


Fly High

by RoryKurago



Category: Dinotopia - James Gurney
Genre: Miniseries, Multi, Skybax Corps, Wingmates, cumspiritik - Freeform, mostly non-compliant with the TV series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 09:19:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3204005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoryKurago/pseuds/RoryKurago
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David had plans after the World Beneath: amends, reconciliation... but that's a crock. Clearly. Good thing there's plenty else to worry about: it’s time for wingmate assignment, the Outsiders are acting up, and Romana hasn’t been the same since Volcaneum.</p><p>Ch11: David talks to his least favourite person, and delegates from Sauropolis take issue with one of Canyon City's own, leading to a surprising revelation.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Runaway

**Author's Note:**

> Miniseries + Book compliant, but takes a different path before the TV series. Written in part from a set of 100 Themes prompts.
> 
> Unbetaed; all mistakes are my own, though if anyone would like to help?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 31 – Runaway
> 
> I wondered why I had sudden feeling for this story again when I've been on a massive PacRim kick since last May--and then I realised I was essentially writing Drift-compatible pilot pairs and it made sense again. So. There's that.
> 
> Otherwise known as “Rory finds a way to write Drift-compatible pairs, pseudo-militaries and dinosaurs into a single story with sign language, PTSD, and politics.”

Dawn was coming to the canyon. The sun hadn't risen yet, but David liked to be awake before the rest of the city. He liked the slap of the wind in his face laden with the bitter smell of plains grass. He liked the way colour crept into the stone as the sun rose, like something ancient and immense coming back to life. In the middle distance, he could hear Skybax starting to stir: clacking bills and soft trilling. Further away, the storm that had followed him in from Waterfall City late last night was finally moving off. He cradled a mug of tea from the brazier in his quarters, basking in the stillness.

He liked the weight of the quiet bearing down on him. He liked to imagine this was what the world had been like billions of years ago.

And today, he liked imagining he was alone in it—no people, no troubles. No dad, no Karl, no Marion—

He drew in a heavy breath through his nose, controlling it the way Oonu had taught them. One: sand beneath his feet, worn powdery by the wind and still cool from night. Two: the wind on his cheeks, chilly and strong this morning, smelling of Skybax guano and dampness from the river far below. The river... 

He moved on. Three: footsteps scuffing stone behind him.

He turned.

Romana, a blanket wrapped like a palisade to her chin, stopped a few feet away. “You’re back early.” She looked gaunt, gouged hollow on the inside by bad dreams as David was. “I thought the council gave you a full month to settle your father.”

“I missed the City.”

She looked like she knew he was lying but didn’t call him on it. He didn’t know if he was grateful or disappointed. Instead of speaking, she moved up beside him.

David still couldn’t bring himself to stand at the canyon’s lip but he was closer than he had been months ago, when Skybax training began. Romana seemed more at ease at the brink than him but he expected that. Her fringed blanket dimpled at her throat where she clutched it as if afraid it would be torn away. There were deep hollows under her eyes in the half-light.

“I think the City missed _you_ ,” she rasped. “You should hear the stories the others tell about your escapades during the Sunstone Crisis.”

“I can imagine.”

“No, I don’t think you can,” she said with a thin chuckle. The wind tore the sound apart. She held the blanket more tightly.

David had heard from his roommate that Romana had been troubled since the Crisis. That she spent late nights in the library, and later ones in her room with the lamp burning all night. That she cried in her sleep.

Last night David had heard her himself, through the wall: a sob, then a choked off scream. The silence that followed. He’d contemplated getting up and going to her, sitting up with her as she had with him in the first weeks of training. Her roommate - ground crew, not a cadet - had died in the chaos. David didn’t know if she was close with any of the other First Years.

But if he went, he’d have to explain why he was awake too. And David, though he was many things, was not ready to talk about the fact that every time he closed his eyes, he saw himself swimming through dark waters that had no surface, his lungs burning, legs weighted down by the dead.

Those were his demons. Only Romana knew the names of hers. Neither was ready to share.

“Did something happen?” Romana murmured. David looked sideways at her. “You’re making that face. That one like a tyrannosaur’s cloaca.”

David couldn’t even laugh. ‘Something’. A perfect afternoon in Waterfall City—the smells of honeysuckle and roasting nuts on the breeze, the flowers from a festival still strewn on the streets, a pipe band practicing the open court of the music hall, the cool shadow of Zippeau’s house after the heat of the sun. The door of the Scotts’ old room slightly ajar. Breathy sounds. Karl and Marion’s hands interlaced on the coverlet.

'Something'. David had asked Marion to meet him at Zippeau’s so they could take a walk along the canals and he could apologise for acting like an ass the preceding weeks. His father and Karl had gone upriver fishing.

Karl must have forgotten something. Marion must have arrived early. They must have talked. Marion must have said ‘yes’.

David felt his face twisting. He drew in another deep breath. That didn’t help. Bypassing Oonu’s technique, he went back further: five things he could see. Four he could hear. Three he could smell. Just like the shrink taught him when he was a kid with anxiety.

“No. Nothing happened.”

Romana gazed him unmoving behind her blanket palisade, a deep immeasurable something in her eyes that David couldn’t name. It wasn’t patience, like Rosemary waiting for him to confess; or disappointment, like Oonu when David refused to jump.

I know your secret, her eyes said.

 _And I know yours,_ thought David _._ “Nothing I won’t get over.”

Romana turned her gaze back to the horizon where red was seeping up a like watercolour. He wondered if she was thinking about getting over things. How long it might take. If it would happen at all.

Resettling the blanket like a Skybax adjusting its wings, she seemed suddenly smaller than usual. The blanket fringe fluttered against her cheek. At the level of her elbow, a tear had been mended in childish, unequal stitches in cheerful yellow thread. The urge to put a hand on her shoulder, to offer some kind of physical support, gripped him powerfully.

A dozen things flashed through his head to say:

_I know how you feel._

_It gets better._

_I see them too._

_Do you want to talk about it._

But there were things they didn’t talk about. Even after the Crisis, and all the death and despair. “Want to go for a lap around Cleon’s Mesa?” he said instead.

Before she answered, a pteranodon screeched in the depths of the canyon and took flight.

Romana tracked it grimly, mouth drawn thin and the corners of her eyes creased. “Let’s go for a run instead.”


	2. Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 63 – Questions

The mess hall was crowded when David and Romana arrived, fresh from showering off the dust of a climb several days later. David still hated it, but Romana was right: he _was_ getting better every time. Attempt sixteen still hadn’t been a cakewalk but he hadn’t puked.

David managed to squeeze onto a bench between two cadets from their own cadre – a tiny black woman with red tattoos furling up from the neck of her uniform and Latino-looking man – and opposite another two, these a redheaded woman and a sturdy black man. Romana thanked Tosh when he shuffled aside to make room for her between him and Lliale.

He flashed David a shy grin across the table that was bright against his dark skin. “So you arrived in time to save some food from Max after all, roommate,” he said in his soft voice. “You cut it close.”

“David’s getting a little better every time,” Romana said smoothly. The redheaded woman, Lliale, and the Latino exchanged raised eyebrows.

David dropped his eyes to his tray before they could comment; best not to bait the dynamic duo. (Or let them bait him.) Lunch was spice-stuffed green beans, roast squash, some kind of pasta soup. He murmured a thanks as Romana poured out mugs of water for them both.

Arienne scratched an insect bite over her tattoo. “We’d have sent Lliale into the fray for you,” she offered, “but…” She waved a hand.

No explanation needed: Lliale and Kados, never quiet for long, were hip-deep in another city-famous row. Around the same in height, temperament, and mischievous inclination, they were well-matched in most things and disagreement was no different. Their bickering was practically a spectator sport. Third parties not infrequently placed bets on the outcome of long-running spats. As if to underscore the ferocity of this one, Kados reached out and tweaked a wisp of red hair sharply. Lliale slapped his hand away. The reflex got her an impish grin, loosing a fresh torrent of rebuke.

Arienne and Tosh had long since tuned them out in favour of discussing alterations being made to Chandara’s Skybax quarters.

Following Tosh and Arienne’s example, David zoned out the argument and tucked into his roast squash. Tosh was expounding on Oonu’s initial reaction to his flight performance; Romana’s increasingly impressed scepticism was amusing to observe—as was Arienne’s new tic: every so often she would tug a curl that hung by her ear and whisk a look past Tosh across the room at another cadet from their cadre. She and Oskrim had been climbing partners during their first six months, but David hadn’t noticed any tension then. Of course, he thought heavily, he’d been kind of wrapped up in Marion. There was likely a _lot_ he hadn’t noticed. Romana would know more than he did. He looked over at her. Her eyebrows had risen at Tosh. If Tosh wasn’t misreading it, she said, he must have _truly_ impressed the Squadron Leader.

Behind David, a male voice mentioned the Rainy Basin. The fork paused halfway to his mouth. It never finished the journey.

Two men – a cartographer and a clerk, from their sleeve insignia and the ink speckling their hands – were seated side by side at the table kittycorner to David. The cartographer spoke aloud; the clerk responded with his hands. While travelling over the Rainy Basin carrying correspondence back from the Hatchery, the cartographer and his wingmate had caught sight of something glinting in the distance. They’d found a bluff overlooking the area the glint had come from and swooped in low from the west to land undetected.

David wasn’t 100% on Dinotopia’s sign language yet, but the sharp circling of one fist around the other was a gesture he’d seen before. He didn’t get much of the next flurry, but he thought he saw _wagons_ and _metal._

“It wasn’t metal scraps,” the cartographer insisted. “There were all these lumpy covered shapes, with odd bits pushing up. Big ones, you know. All wrapped up in canvas like a May Day gift. But the bit we saw was a long, metal tube—like a telescope.”

The clerk snorted and made the circle gesture _. …taking up astronomy?_ _That will keep them out of mischief._

“I very much doubt it, friend. Knowing the Outsiders, this probably means they’re up to _more_ mischief, not less. They didn’t want it seen by anyone, see? There was a black-haired woman shouting at the driver to tie down the canvas again – and damn the Compys, if they wanted to wriggle in there they’d be cleared out back at the castle.”

The clerk was shaking his head. _I wouldn’t want to be Squadron Leader when… Sauropolis(?) hears about this._ Then a series of signs David didn’t understand, though he picked out _security_ and _Sunstone Crisis._ That sign had been thrown around enough that David thought he’d still remember it in his nineties if he left Dinotopia today. _It’ll be a headache for everyone if the brass_ (not the respectful sign for the commanders; the derisive one) _want to hunt this._

No, that wasn’t right. ‘ _Pursue_ ’ this.

The cartographer shrugged. “All I know is, tomorrow another patrol flies out. See if they can spot the convoy again. Maybe this time, they’ll see something to put the whole thing to bed and we can all relax.”

The clerk chuckled humourlessly and he made the flying away gesture even pilots made to each other sometimes when one of them wished for good weather: Don’t count on it.

His face was grim. _This is_ … the circle gesture. _No news is not good news._ The cartographer started to nod and his eyes lifted toward David’s.

David swung his head back to the other cadets sharply. After a few minutes, the two men packed up their trays and carried them away. David kept his head down.

When they were gone he looked up at the others. “What does this mean?” He made the circle gesture.

The cadets eyed his hands uncertainly.

“Outsiders,” said Lliale. Down the table, she and Kados had called a truce. She regarded David’s hands with flat black eyes. “It means ‘Outsiders’.”

Her younger brothers were deaf, David remembered.

“Why?” asked Tosh.

David shrugged. “I saw it somewhere.” Across the table, Romana’s eyes burned into his before she went back to her single-minded eating. “What’s an Outsider?”

The cadets exchanged looks. The easy-going laughter seeped out of the atmosphere. Arienne, generally second only to Kados in impish good humour, sucked her cheeks in and Romana’s fork paused.

“The Outsiders are just that,” Tosh said in an unusually grave tone. “Outsiders. They’re a group of violent misfits who choose to live outside Dinotopia’s laws.”

“Don’t the Chandarans do that?”

“Chandara is a whole different kingdom,” said Arienne.

"--and things have been... difficult for them since Sauropolis imposed the trade embargo," added Romana. "We don't actually know all that much about the state of things in Chandara. Lines of communication were severed."

Tosh nodded. “The Outsiders, on the other hand, are Dinotopian. But they're aggressive noncomformists--thugs, vandals. Among other things, they raid settlements; fight amongst themselves, attack saurians— _eat_ them… They hide in the Rainy Basin, but occasionally they venture out to capture something valuable in the hopes of ransoming it. If you really want to know about them, you should ask Oskrim,” he suggested, naming the cadet Arienne was eyeing up. “His parents are botanists in the Basin; he grew up there.”

“The last anyone heard of the Outsiders,” said Lliale, “they’d taken over a castle ruin in the north of the Basin and set up camp there.”

“But they’ve been quiet for months,” Kados said. Lliale was leaning on her folded arms to following the conversation; David pretended not to notice Kados’ hand across the table stroking her elbow. (It wasn't strictly forbidden for cadets to be nestmates, but it was deeply frowned on.)

“About time for some mischief, then,” Lliale said with not entirely pleasant humour, turning her eyes back to Kados. The grimace he returned was equally dark.

He caught David’s expression as he stood to mirror Lliale, and clapped David on the shoulder. “Slipperier than Polongo eels, the Outsiders. They’re always up to something. It rarely works out for them. I wouldn’t worry about it. Now, come along nestfriend, ” he said to Lliale. “After that exertion, I smell rank which means you smell worse.”

“You _do_ smell like something that crawled out of a swamp and died,” she agreed serenely. “I, however, smell like sunshine and lilies.”

Romana caught David’s eye as Kados ducked past Lliale out of the mess with a quick retort. Tosh and Arienne went back to their conversation, now debating the best season for fishing in Warmwater Bay (a contentious issue, as Arienne was born inland of Prosperine and Tosh's family were itinerant Players in the Great Desert). Romana looked contemplative. Before David could comment to her, she dropped her eyes and carried on eating.


	3. Tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 59 – Tomorrow

Cadets, David and Romana among them, dotted the Corps archive like mushrooms when a message runner dashed by the door. A little over half the First Years hunched up in their khakis over copies of weather almanacs from the last decade, looking like nothing so much as an Earth Farm nursery tray. David managed not to smile at the idea and tried to focus on the Northern Plains data.

The runner’s head poked back into the doorway, followed by the rest of him when he recognised several faces.

Two long months had gone by with only sporadic word from Waterfall City and David had begun to allow himself to imagine that he might lose himself in Canyon City’s detached busyness. For no reason other than past history, he had a sinking notion that the runner might be looking for him.

It wasn’t so. “First Year cadets?”

Of eight people in the Archives, five looked up. At the corner of David’s eye, Romana was giving him a curious look as if she’d heard his sigh of relief.

“Some of them,” replied a big blonde cadet from the Forbidden Mountains, slow and steady as a glacier.

“You’ve been issued new orders. Squadron Leader Oonu has been called away for a few days. He’s left instructions for all First Year Cadets to assemble on the Launching Ledge at dawn two days hence with all flight kit. You will receive your provisional Wingmate assignments and undergo an initial compatibility assessment. In the meantime, cadets are to attend all classes and PT sessions as usual.” The runner withdrew with an Overlander-like bob of his head, presumably to seek out the rest of their yearmates.

Each First Year sat in contemplative silence as they processed the news.

Finally Oskrim let out a whoop and clapped the big blond on the back. “Yes! Wingmates, Max. We’re moving up in the world.”

David grinned at the enthusiasm and turned back to his almanac. Their Northern Plains case study for the end of the week wouldn’t write itself. He skimmed the symbols on his scroll without really taking them in. Wingmates. The day after tomorrow, they would have one human partner to fly with until the end of the year—or forever. The person who would always have their back and guard their wings.

Rubbing an eyebrow pensively, he raised his eyes and Romana caught them from the far table she haunted on bad nights. She held his gaze only briefly before lowering her eyes to her scroll.

 


	4. Luck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 99 - Luck

As luck would have it, the same Powers-That-Be who heard David’s prayer for distraction from The Waterfall City Incident (and obligingly piled up training, inclement weather, and a hefty dose of night-terrors) must have been listening.

At dawn the twelve of them assembled, stamping in the cold. Only the absence of an officer let them loosen up to do that much (otherwise it would have been backs straight; chest out; _let_ your ass freeze off, it’ll lighten your flight load). There was a palpable thrill in the air. David could sense it tingling through the all of them like electricity—something rewarding to come, somewhere between his first A+ and his first flight. (Or maybe his first look at real breasts and his first flight.)

Romana exhaled heavily beside him, and he flushed at the irrational thought she might have heard his thoughts. She was among the few to hold off the shivers. She and Yun (whose morning-face on David’s other side could only have been sourer if it were carved by a sculptor fond of Zippeau’s _arctium longevus_ tea) maintained parade posture admirably. But David could see her straining.

Oonu appeared just as the sun crested the rim of the canyon. In one hand he carried a tightly-coiled scroll. Despite the early hour, he looked brisker than ever. David wondered what the urgent business calling him away had been but snapped to attention with the others.

Greeting them, Oonu nodded to a man David hadn’t noticed before. The man stepped forward from beside the line of cadets and took the scroll from Oonu. David knew him by sight only: Assistant Squadron Leader Gylen Devar (although Oskrim had mentioned the handsome older Rider was a personal friend of Romana’s from Treetown). A puffy scar darted out of his hairline above the temple and folded back just above a flat cloth patch strapped where his ear should have been. Something with a sharp beak had nearly carved off a flap of skin, and actually _had_ taken his ear in the bargain, David realised with a chill. As Devar passed, David marvelled up close at how narrowly Devar had escaped being blinded. The scarring looked painful and relatively fresh.

“You have progressed faster than expected,” Oonu announced. He casually assumed at-ease position. “Recent events have no doubt played a hand in this. Never before has the Corps seen a first-year cohort step up and shoulder responsibility in a crisis so readily and competently as you did. There have been many tragic turns of events in recent months. Not one among us has been left unscarred."

David couldn't stop himself glancing at Devar but the older flier showed no reaction.

“But the Corps believes," Oonu continued, "you have the strength to turn these hard lessons to your advantage. Ordinarily, wingmates would not be assigned for fully three months further into your training. After long discussion, however, the decision has been made to waive your final months before integration.”

He turned a fierce brown eye more like his Saurian partner than David had ever seen over the cadets. “I expect you to prove yourselves worthy of this honour.”

“Once you have been assigned your wingmate, pairs will complete an obstacle course to demonstrate their potential synchronicity. Pairs have been carefully matched up, so don’t think to come to me complaining just because you don’t like your wingmate—although I _expect_ you’re all past that by now.”

The Master Pilot’s tone twinged a rebellious nerve in David, one Karl was always teasing David for pretending he didn’t have. Automatically his mind went to Yun. It wasn’t that any of them really _disliked_ the cadet; it was more… grim apathy. Well, he thought, sourly, at the very least he’d be predictable. David would do his best to make it work, he told himself. He wasn’t a quitter like Karl; if it came to it, he’d just grit his teeth and tough it out until end-of-year reassessment.

“The tests will take some time,” Oonu was saying. “Pairs will be summoned for their time trial throughout the day.”

David felt more than heard the collective breath as Oonu unravelled the scroll; he was among it.

“Cadets Maxwell and Liang.”

David winced in sympathy for the mountain man. But that was Yun out of the way, and Max probably was the only one with the patience to handle him.

“Jory and Toshran. Arienne and Heygar.” Another odd match-up. David skimmed a sidelong glance past Romana at Arienne and past her, at the far end of the line, the stocky scarred man.

“David and Romana.”

The air left his lungs in a rush. For better or worse, he had Romana for a wingmate—or she had him.

“Oskrim and Sorba. Kados and Lliale.” The latter exchanged sidelong looks and barely hid their smiles. ‘We’ll never sleep safe in our beds again,’ David thought numbly.

As ASL Devar stepped forward to give them the final rundown on procedure from this point, there was a flutter through the line like a ruffling of feathers as the cadets adjusted to their new reality. Nothing was really different—and yet it seemed to David that the whole world had subtly shifted and at the oddest moment he was going to turn and find everything just slightly out of place.

Devar blithely disregarded the cadets’ lack of attention as he ran down a list of need-to-knows. Several critical and appraising looks went back and forth. Not a few furtive smiles, and gleeful glints to the eye as well. Kados and Lliale looked downright evil.

Oonu raised his eyebrows at the nearest and their faces went miraculously blank. In spite of the stern set of his posture, though, a hint of amusement lingered in the corners of his mouth. If he didn’t know better, David might have guessed Oonu was not unsympathetic to their excitement.

With a wry smile, Oonu ordered Max and Yun to remain and dismissed the rest of the class. “Breathe deep.”

The cadets thumped their chests in unison. “Fly high!”

Romana turned to David as the line trooped off the ledge and broke up. Behind them the rumbled of Devar’s voice started up again as he approached the two men and began to give them a more rigorous rundown of the trial ahead.

David waited for Romana to say something. For the life of him he couldn’t tell if her expression was of pleasure or upset. She merely looked ‘disquieted’ (the way Rosemary once described David).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't really sure until now (a couple of years down the track) of Gylen's face, but I'm pretty settled on a bearded Rana Daggubati, so 'DeLar' has been retconned to Devar. (As far as I can find, Daggubati is Tamil, so that's what I'm working with? If you know for sure, please let me know!)


	5. Elf & Joke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 17 – Elf + 48 - Joke

The day they had finally gone for their first flight around Cleon's Mesa since David's return, the sun had peeked over the horizon just as they banked around the back corner of Cleon’s and broke from the shade.

Light burst over Romana. David—

He’d had a notion before the Sunstone Crisis. Wrapt in Marion, he’d nevertheless been struck on numerous occasions by just how dynamic and _huge_ Romana was, not physically but in manner, and in presence. And then - strung out and half-delirious with fear, clinging to the side of a cliff-face as she reached for his hand during the fifth rendition of the Cadets' Climb she'd coaxed him into - that notion expanded: she was secretly an elf. (Not a tiny pointy-eared green-shirted forest sprite--although come to think of it, Romana was tiny, wore green, and her ears were kind of pointy.)

But that to be so… _Romana_ she must secretly be a hundred years old, a thousand, and know a thousand things he did not. (If so, why did she pace and cry and burn through candles in the night?)

At that time, she positively _loomed_ in his mental landscape, a pillar of strength even for a Dinotopian. Honestly more like Rosemary than like David. And different to Marion. If Marion was a spire to his mind, graceful and sweeping, Romana was the towering mesas of the plains—solid and monolithic, unbowed by blistering heat or screaming winds.

A Tolkien elf, then: stoic, dignified.

And then, seeing her in Waterfall City after the chaos of the pteranadon attack – bright spots of colour still high in her cheeks and her breath steaming opaque in the night air like mist off the falls – that image solidified. That was Romana. (Not a thousand years old but still strong. Courageous.)

Then things returned to normal and he was mortified he’d thought it at all. In time he’d forgotten the urge that night to blurt it all out to her.

But at the moment she burst into the sun in flight, Romana was two wing-lengths ahead of him, winning the race they’d informally fallen into with her hair whipping back from her helm like spun gold, not laughing or even smiling but relaxed into the surge of her Skybax’s flight like she’d never stood on a ledge clutching her blanket like an eggshell, and David had forgotten how to breathe. David had lost the race.

He was sure he should have cared about that – gripe, or taunt, or demand a rematch – but when they'd stumbled back onto the ledge in Canyon City with shaky legs and spots of colour high on Romana’s cheeks making her flush even redder under the windburn, he'd forgotten that too.

But that had been weeks ago.

This morning, when the sun had risen again on them stumbling off their mounts, it had failed to chase away Romana’s demons. And when she looked him dead in the eye just once before straightening to face Devar's criticism, he could see them beating their wings in the black of her pupil.

Their test had not gone well.

Dust swirled up around David’s legs as he waved Freefall off, heart joining his stomach in his boots. The pterandon squawked at him and left him to this rare fit of post-flight blues. Reluctantly, David formed up beside Romana and stood to attention. He hadn’t flown so badly since the first time Oonu assessed him and Freefall, and it cut to think he’d backslid. This was what he was good at—all he was good at, whispered that nasty little voice which nagged at him when he shied away from the deepest pools in the baths. (Couldn’t even go swimming these days—) He clamped down on that before it could spread.

A wisp of gold fluttered in his mind’s eye like a pendant. His jacket’s snug-fitting collar was suddenly constrictive. Was that what had happened? He'd been so busy chasing Romana that he forgotten to pay attention to what he was doing?

ASL Devar’s debrief was going straight over his head. The few words David caught held an uncomfortable echo of Oonu’s the day David refused Gideon’s Leap.

Romana’s stiff back and jaw, on the other hand, told David she was taking every word to heart. Her shoulders drew in as Devar rounded off by telling them evaluations would be delivered tomorrow.

At the cliff side of the ledge, Oskrim and Sorba had arrived for their assessment—Oskrim looked nervously excited, like a colt champing at the bit. Sorba, stolid as ever, only looked determined. Devar didn’t look at them but David suspected he was aware of their presence. That inexplicable sixth sense teachers, parents, and sergeants had. Like a shark (as David’s scary third-grade teacher used to claim). Devar seemed capable of snapping a surfboard in two, if with nothing more than the power of his frown. Did Oonu teach him that?

He gave David and Romana a last stern look-over, furrowed scar pale and shiny beside the black of his beard, and dismissed them. David nodded mechanically.

As soon as Devar moved away, Romana tore off her helm. “Are you having some kind of lark?” she hissed at David.

He blinked. “Wha—No! Why would you say that?”

“Is this some kind of joke at my expense? You don’t want me as a wingmate so much you’re actually sabotaging our performance?”

“I am not ‘sabotaging our performance’. I was flying the best I could. Romana—”

Gathering her saddle, she strode down the stairs. He caught up to her at the rack and without a thought grabbed her arm as she pushed past him. “Romana—” She wheeled, blue eyes fierce, and David let go like he’d been branded. “Sorry. Romana, I just—”

He was highly aware of Devar less than thirty feet away. The ASL was an old friend of Romana’s; if he thought David was hassling her… David had won a hard battle against the council to let him back into the Corps when they thought he was pugnacious influence. Making a scene would stir up a whole lot of drama David didn’t need.

“Why are you so angry?” he demanded of Romana in a stage whisper. “That was our first time flying together in proper formation. We’re going to be rough for a while. Just until we get the hang of it.”

“You don’t understand. I can fly better than that—we. We can fly better than that. We should be able to fly better than that.” Something plaintive in her tone caught David off-guard. She tugged her jacket to straighten out the skew David had put in it, and fixed him with sharp, hollowed out eyes. “If we can’t, we might as well not be flying at all.”

Underneath the rigid control of her voice, David heard the steady scuff of footfalls pacing every night and the screaming through the dormitory wall.

Dirt scraped under her boot as she turned and left the training room. David’s saddle was beginning to weigh down his arm; he flipped it over a shoulder and considered.

The sky was awfully big. Sometimes being down on the ground was claustrophobic enough without being crowded by the well-intentioned.

But she was his wingmate. Slinging his saddle onto the rack, he followed her.


	6. Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 97 – Secret

Romana sat with her back to a cliff face, legs dangling in the wind on a ledge overlooking the Skybaxes nesting spires. Daring the void.

Her head was tipped back to watch the azhdarchids circling overhead. David gave the precipitous edge a nervous look and sidled along until he could ease himself down next to her; she didn’t shy away. Across the canyons, the Skybax cried to each other, voices coarse and mournful on the wind.

The humans sat in silence, soaking up the warmth of the red rock like lizards, tasting the hot dry wind. David had long ceased thinking of it as dead: it was as alive to him now as the crying Skybax, sharp and bitter with the taste of sand and tobosa grass on the plains.

“Nothing they teach you can prepare you,” Romana said eventually. “They tell you, ‘the carnivores are coming’. Or show you pictures. ‘This is what a carnivore can do.’ But you can’t possibly comprehend. Not really. Not the magnitude of what you’re going to see.”

David felt earth shift under his hands as he propped himself more firmly back against the cliff. “Volcaneum?”

“The patrols got there too late.”

Word-for-word her verdict to the Masters. They’d all done the PTSD song and dance. (It wasn’t called that, but that’s what it was. Long ‘chats’ with understanding elders, endless tea and seed biscuits, and walks along the canyon edge because ‘some people feel more secure on the move; do you, David?’)

Romana was cleared. Just like David.

But he still woke in a sweat some nights. Not carnivores: long dark spaces. No surface. Weight pressing in and his lungs turning into mouldy stone that pulled him down down down through brackish water that burned up his nose—

The nights he woke, he heard Romana.

David shared a cell with Kados (who was always bedded down with Lliale while Sorba glared them down when they didn’t go straight to sleep). Romana’s roommate never came back from Bent Root.

Some nights the sobbing moans through the cell wall faded. Some nights they didn't. For every five nights they cut off abruptly and he knew she’d woken, there was one when they rose to a Skybax's scream.

The sudden quiet that followed these was oppressive. David sat with feet on the floor in the dark, then, until he heard footsteps scuff. Some nights she stayed in her room, burning through her ration of oil. Other nights she fled.

Some nights, he got up and followed.

In the milky yellow shadows of the archives, always lit, always open, he’d become acquainted shapes of the demons that drove Romana from bed. Their gestures, their habits. But he’d never learned their names.

If he asked, he’d have to name his own, and he’d said _No, Elder: there’s nothing to talk about_ , and they let him have his saddle back.

To him this was solidarity: let’s you and me sit here in the quiet, and I won’t ask what you’re reading, you won’t ask me why, and tomorrow when the sun comes up we’ll go flying like this never happened.

Again and again and again. You never use all your light to keep the demons away for one night, and I never stare at the water and shake.

“If we’d been there,” Romana said. “If we’d been faster—” She hurled a stone off the ledge. Ten thousand feet of falling and then it would hit the water and never rise again. David watched it plummet. He didn't know which scared him more.

Romana’s hands balled in her lap, smeared with red dust. “If I’d been a better flier,” she said wearily, “we might have been in time."

She lapsed into silence. David let it settle, thinking about how that stone must still be falling.

“Do you know," Romana said suddenly, "that once my father saved over a hundred people from a Brachiosaur stampede?” Her eyes, fever-bright, fixed on a Skybax circling over head.

David shook his head.

“My mother ferried _jinka_ to outlying settlements during an epidemic a few years after that. All the land-going saurians were ill themselves or couldn’t be risked by entering an infected zone. Half the Corps was down. Between them, my mother and a single squadron saved scores of tiny settlements from dying out completely.” Romana’s hands twisted in her lap and dusted the quilting of her flightsuit with red. “I couldn’t save a single person in Volcaneum. Not one.”

David had read the reports--including the one from Romana’s own hand. The numbers alone evoked a montage of the worst of the war footage he’d ever seen back in the outside world. He could barely imagine the reality.

Romana's nails were carving red crescents into the meat of her palms but she seemed calmer than in months. "If I can't save _one_ , how do I live up to their legacy?"

“Then don’t,” said David. Tact, the wise men say, is overrated.

She looked at him like he’d suggested they jump.

He revised: Tact, his brother said over the audio of _Three Wise Men,_ is overrated. Gunmen shoot out the tyres on a truck full of milk. Or was it _Three Kings_? Another hazy movie David would never see again. He forded on.

“Make your own. You’re one of the best fliers I’ve ever seen. Better than me. Maybe.”

The last part was a joke. Romana, for the first time in weeks, laughed.

The verges of her mouth were bloodless and her demons had made nests of her eyesockets, but she laughed. “You’re not _so_ bad.”

“Yeah, except today." Her smile withered but it didn't die; he clung to that. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. But what I _do_ know is that you and me? Do _not_ suck at flying together."

“David, racing around Cleon's is not the same as flying in formation. And being a wingmate isn’t solely about keeping level with each other in the air.”

“No, it isn’t,” he admitted, rising (cautiously). “But it’s a good start. Let’s just… try again. We have the rest of the afternoon off; the third-years are taking out a patrol up the Amu River. One of the pairs is Koz and Holt; they won’t mind if we shadow them.” He extended a hand down to Romana.

She got to her feet with distinctly less caution, and David envied her ease just a little. “We have to clear it with Oonu.”

We have to. Not _would_ have to. He shrugged, feeling the pressure of being on the ledge drop away like a stone into the canyon, and backed onto wider ground. “Come on: we tell him it’s a team-work trust exercise and he’ll go for it. He’s big on that kind of thing—death-defying tower climbs, and jumping over eight-thousand-foot drops.”

She looked brittle as they turned for deeper passages, but there was iron peeking through the cracks. Her laugh came stronger this time; less brittle. “I believe you’re misrepresenting his intentions. He only wants the best from all of us. That’s why we were paired up the way we were.”

David tried to ignore the warmth that washed through his veins. He _must_ be turning reptile: imagining heat soaking through him like a lizard on rock. “Fine,” he said, mocking serious, “ _you_ climb to a Skybax nest without a rope and tell me he’s not a little bit of a vicarious adrenaline junkie.”

“A what?”

“Never mind. First stop, lunch. You need to eat something or you’re going to fall off that mighty brute you call a Skybax, and then we’ll _definitely_ meet Oonu’s standards for character-building.”


	7. Seraph

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 89 - Angel

It’d been three days since their test flight and to David’s immense surprise (and relief) he and Romana had passed. They hadn’t exactly glided by with flying colours but they’d made the hurdle. They hadn’t ranked last, either: to Kados and Lliale’s joy, Oskrim and Sorba had narrowly avoided reassignment. (David didn’t know why Kados and Lliale were celebrating until he learned they had a bet with the kitchen staff on which team would perform the worst, which struck him as slightly mean-spirited.)

But the twelve of them had survived. (Though by the stiff silence between Oz and Sorba and the stiffer sets of their shoulder, it wasn’t entirely unscathed.) Tonight the Second Years had put together a celebration for their new comrades.

David hunched at a table by the wall, trying to stay out of the way of the festivities and remember if he’d ever seen Dinotopians cut loose quite like this. They got rowdier closer to the coast, absolutely, he’d seen that for himself (was it the pirate influence?) but up here in the highlands they tended to be more stoic. Only when Kados and Lliale produced a small cask did their wager with the kitchen staff begin to make sense. The cadets had pulled through a week of Wingmate Acuity Training—and now they were official, the older fliers wanted to help them celebrate. Or use them as an excuse to celebrate. David wasn’t sure which.

The Masters looked the other way while a group of cadets commandeered a lower level storage room, strung it with paper lanterns and flimsy garlands, then packed it with alcohol, fruit punch, and pilots. Three separate tables held varying tile and dice games, and riders talked in clusters around them, flushed with drink and laughter. A Fourth Year with a viol stood in one corner stringing out lively tunes, accompanied by a steno on a two-tubed flute. It was dim, hot, and noisy. David couldn’t remember having such a good time in months.

To his side sat Oskrim and Tosh (mugs in hand) laughing uproariously at one of Max's jokes about sabertooths and temperatures in the Ranges. Jory and Yun were nowhere to be seen, but parties like this weren't their style. Romana was playing a tile game with several Third Years and Arienne.

Players had to add tiles to a thin biscuit wafer balanced over a wide-mouthed cup until it toppled or cracked and everything fell in. That ‘cracked the eggshell’. Loser had to toss back the liquid in the cup. Two windows - shutters flung open - let in the mellow night air but there was still a deep flush in Romana’s cheeks and her hand shook even before she reached out to lay another tile. There’d been a grin plastered over her face for an hour, her pupils were blown, and her hair was a dull golden halo in the lamplight. The eggshell cracked.

Cheering and laughing, the Third Years pounded the table until she drank everything in the cup.

Arienne dragged David to the table. “A new game,” she demanded. “Teach us something from the outside.”

Romana spat out the tiles. “Yes, wingmate. Teach us something new.”

David twisted the rules of King’s Cup. A tile to each action, a slightly softened set of actions. He didn’t know how well any of them held their booze and it definitely wasn’t fruit-punch in all of their cups. Romana laughed as hard as the rest, teasing good-naturedly, wrinkling her nose at the Third Years’ tales. Her arm was warm pressed against David’s at the crowded table.

...

“I’d like,” she slurred as they climbed the stairs back to their new shared quarters on a higher spur of the canyon wall, “to have one night when I don’t see them. Just one.” She stopped to lean against the rock, resting her forehead against the stone. Eyes closed, she pressed her lips against the red as if to kiss it. “Why is that so much to ask?”

David sagged against the wall beside her. “I don’t know.”

“Sometimes I wish I’d been there with them.” Her mouth moved against the rock like a lover. Was she even aware he was here, David wondered distantly. Or did she think, as drunks and the distressed often did, that his voice came from the very rock? Was she telling her secrets to the canyon knowing it would keep them until the world ended again? “Sometimes I think if I was my mother, we could have saved them.”

The stars were out between skeletal ribbons of cloud. David could pick Orion. Taurus. The Pleiades.

“We’ll never know,” he said quietly. “She’s not here, and the one who got the word to the rest of the towns was you.”

She turned her head, pressing her cheek to the blades and creases of the rock, and opened her eyes.

David let his head roll to the side to gaze at her through the gloom. “One raindrop raises the sea."

“You’ve really settled,” she murmured. “Haven’t you. You’re roosted here. For better or for worse.”

He smiled despite himself, despite the fit of wind that plucked at his undone uniform jacket, despite the smell of distant rain headed this way over the plains. “I think I have.”

She rolled her body until her side pressed into the cliff, studying him with her head tilted. Her eyelids hung heavy but she was fighting them. “You are,” she said at length, “a very, very strange man, David Scott. But—I’m very glad your winds carried you here.” Smiling, she swayed forward and traced a finger over his lip.

Then she doubled up and vomited onto the steps.

 

David put an arm around her waist and half-carried her the rest of the way to their quarters, keeping out of the way in case of any more emissions. The heavy canvas external blind was already tied down. Balancing her on the edge of her pallet in the dark, he carefully peeled off her jacket and laid her down.

Her lamp was the closest. David lit it on the second try, making a note to himself to start storing his flint on his desktop too.

She looked, curled gently on her side with her eyes closed and fingers curled by her face in the soft light, very angelic. He paused a moment to take in the picture:

Romana unguarded. A mythical thing. A wonder of gold and iron with pinions that would carry her to the world’s edge and beyond if she wanted them to.

Then he moved her hair back from her face, tying it back with the leather thong from her nightstand, angled one of her legs so one foot was on the floor, and fetched a bucket.


	8. Plushie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 44 - Plushies  
> How does something so innocuous become something so horrific? This one got away from me and sort of exploded. But hey: plot.

Jory flew two full wingspans away from his wingmate as they cut west from Probosca through a pass in the Forbidden Mountains.

Tosh had pulled up better than the rest of the First Years after the festivities two days ago, but Jory expected his head still throbbed from the delicate way he coaxed his Skybax into banking closer to Jory. The cold at this altitude couldn’t be helping. Jory was only sympathetic to a point. To his mind, Oonu had tapped them specially for surveillance training with a mentor pair from the 3rd Wing, and they could not perform less than optimally. Jory had handed Tosh a full pitcher of water to down before breakfast, and observed him drink it, but there his coddling stopped. It was purely tragic happenstance that the same day they were intended to begin field training from Probosca, a caravan failed to arrive at its scheduled checkpoint on exiting the Rainy Basin. Jory and Tosh had been co-opted from practice search flights up and down the Amu River to accompany their mentor pair on a real operation.

It was a perfect bluebird day--not a cloud in sight as they skimmed over marzipan slopes. The glare was near blinding, even through a Skybax rider's slitted visor. He squinted at Tosh and Reetu when they drifted closer.

Lifting one hand off his saddle, Tosh signed an inquiry somewhat hampered by his thick gloves.

“I see nothing,” Jory called back, pitching his voice through the wind and his heavy muffle. “If we don’t meet Yatta and Duminka at Lightning Hill, we’ll have to turn back.”

Tosh nodded and tucked his head back into the pocket of protection behind his Skybax’s head.

Jory glanced over at Tosh. Through the slits in his helmet, his wingmate’s prone form did seem to lie less easily than normal. It might have been the cold. But Tosh’s face had become uncharacteristically grave when the messenger bird arrived in Probosca before dawn, and Jory had imagined as he gathered his own kit that Tosh was envisaging his home caravan missing on the road.

But it was probably the cold. Before them, the foothills of the range opened out into verdant hills and gullies that dropped steadily away into the deepest part of the Basin. At a nudge from Jory, Cloudburst angled down to follow them, descending into warmer, more humid air.

...

The caravan was supposed to be travelling from Nidus to Hookwood, one leg of a trade and resupply mission through the least hospitable parts of carnivore territory. The outriders had gotten through to Hookwood hours after the caravan was supposed to arrive, Parasaurolophus mounts panting and vocal with distress.

The Skybax arrived in Hookwood before noon.

While the outriders downed mugs of fruit juice to revive their wits, Yatta questioned them; Duminka unrolled an oilcloth map from her light pack and marked the travellers’ route with a stick of charcoal. Jory and Tosh stood back and observed.

The shorter of the outriders leant over Duminka’s map. “Our intended trail was here,” he said, hovering the point of a boot knife over the map, “but a feeding Tyrannosaur on the road forced us to change our path. We went east here—”

“Up the foothills,” said Yatta.

“Yes. Giljan—” he indicated the taller outrider, staring into his cup “—found an old timber-cutter’s path. The wagons struggled on it. Slow going. We came across an older road - mile-markers in the ancient style - but it turned up the mountain. Our track cut across it, maybe here? We’d been travelling along the timber track maybe an hour and some when we were attacked.”

“Bandits?” asked Yatta.

“No, sharp-claws. Half a dozen that I saw.”

“Eight,” rasped Giljan. “But these sharp-claws—they didn’t move like a hunting pack. Too… organised.”

“Like something was controlling them,” said the first.

“Mosè—” Giljan began, but Yatta cut him off with a gesture.

“What do you mean?”

Both men shrugged, their faces drawn and pale.

“Just that,” said Mosè. “They came up out of the trees at us and then seemed to… stop. Went for the food wagon and the wagon-pullers but other than that…”

“We couldn’t rightly say, ma’am,” said Giljan shamefacedly. “They cut the caravan in half with the first charge. We were up the front, and when it became apparent they weren’t interested in the meat decoys we carried, we left.”

“We had a group of travellers with us,” interjected Mosè.

Yatta turned a level stare on him.

He shrunk into himself. “B-but with them on foot and no decoys, there wasn’t much we could do. The caravan master bade us run ahead and alert Hookwood. They started up the mountain. We got here and you—”

Yatta shared a look with Duminka that Jory couldn’t interpret.

“You said the old road was roughly here,” Yatta said, indicating on the map.

Mosè opened his mouth, then subsided. “Yes.”

“And the caravan was attacked somewhere around here.”

“Yes.”

“One last question, gentlemen, and then you can rest. You mentioned to the town master you thought the Outsiders were involved. What makes you think that?”

The two men exchanged looks.

“Well,” said Mosè, “as we left the wagons, we heard shouting behind us. Didn’t sound like anyone in the caravan. It sounded like they were shouting orders.”

…

The elder fliers were a stern pair and experienced searchers, but frowns put matching lines on their foreheads. Caravans went missing sometimes - it was a fact of life - but this talk of controlled carnivores…

While Duminka went to send a more detailed short-range dispatch to Treetown (who could send a Skybax rider to Waterfall City or Canyon City and advise their Squadrons to stand by) Yatta scratched at the tattooed lines on her chin and briskly sketched a wide grid around the outrider’s marks on the map.

Tosh and Jory listened without comment, eating a quick lunch of cheese and pieces of dried fruit and meat.

“Do you think,” Tosh asked as Yatta pulled out her own food, “it’s possible the Outsiders have found a way to control sharp-claws?”

Jory looked at him sidelong. Considering. Measuring.

“I think a lot of things are possible,” said Yatta, squinting at the position of the sun. “But I don’t let possibility interfere with the reality of people who need help.”

With that she chewed in meditative silence. When Duminka returned, they mounted up.

…

They found the remains of the caravan near sundown, just as Duminka pointed at the horizon and signalled a return to Hookwood for the night. Tosh waved to get her attention and pointed down into the trees.

Yatta stayed aloft to keep watch. The other three swooped down on a stone outcrop a little way above the track, and then picked their way down on foot.

Even through his hyper-awareness of every rustling branch and snapped twig, Jory was mildly impressed they’d managed to get wagons through at all. The way the trees crowded in, they would have been stopping every half-hour to cut away an obstacle. His interest faded away when they reached the trail.

They stood in the middle of a caravan at the apex of a curve in the track. There was no sign or sound of movement. As the outriders had said, the caravan had been cut in half, the back portion some twenty feet away from the last cart of the front. Bits of shattered frame and wheel, and torn cloth littered the path between three-toed depressions in the leaf litter. A metre to Jory’s left, a ceramic jar lay cracked on its side, contents long since drained out to soak the dust. Bizarrely, amid the scattered wreckage and splashes of blood was not a single body-human or saurian. Jory was disquieted to note, however, that something large had been dragged off the trail and down through the trees directly in front of them.

“If you hear anything,” Duminka murmured, “you run straight back for the Skybax.” So saying, she strode to the right to examine the wagons at the front.

“I’ll check the back,” murmured Tosh.

Jory followed him. Every step required navigating a bruised vines across the path, a piece of wheel, a dropped object. Beside one wagon, he knelt to pick up a shell-handled knife forgotten in the dust. When he looked up, Tosh was paused between two carts. From the way he stood, Jory knew what Tosh had found before he saw it himself.

The Anchiceratops harnessed to the wagon had been tipped onto its side. Its throat lay in tatters and something had bitten through its harness to get at its soft underbelly. The driver had been too slow to cut the leathers, Jory supposed sickly.

Tosh gazed at it in silence and then moved on. He moved more quietly now—as though not to disturb the dead. Or perhaps to avoid drawing attention back to the caravan. Overhead, the cry of Yatta’s Skybax was ghoulish. Her silhouette swooped by, stirring the treetops on another circuit of the area. The reminder they weren’t alone with the dead on the ground was of little comfort to Jory.

He spared a moment to crouch down beside the Anchiceratops. He laid a hand on its knobbly skin. It was leathery and cool—cooler than expected, even though he knew the dead held no heat. It seemed… sacrilegious that something he conceived of as eternal could be so lifeless. Moreso that it lay here so wastefully, its body unconsumed, energies unspent. That it had not been laid to rest properly.

Head down, he murmured the farewell of his home village. He remained a moment longer and then he stood and moved on as well. Daylight ran short.

The cargo wagons he passed were mostly empty, slashed rope nets discarded on the tray beds and straps hanging slack.

Toward the end of the train, three brightly-painted wagons hung back from the rest. Tosh was examining these. Where the others were more or less perfunctory and plain, these were colourful: lovingly decorated with carved frames and ribbons. The harness of the first had been cleanly sliced. An elaborately painted board on the side of the second was splashed with blood and the green canopy was in ribbons. Tosh passed it without looking and gingerly swung the back door open to peer inside.

Approaching him, Jory paused when something soft gave under his boot. He stepped back. A doll lay half-flattened in a saurian footprint. He bent down and picked it up. It was caked with mud and worse, but unbloodied. It was a plush dinosaur of multi-patterned canvas: fine work, with a bell sewn onto its tail.

Pulling a handkerchief from his flight jacket pocket, he wiped off the worst of the muck. Tosh approached as he unclogged the bell.

Taking the toy from his wingmate, Tosh regarded it like a headstone.

Jory looked again at the painted board. These three caravans - the homey, lovingly appointed ones - belonged to a Players’ troupe.

He looked gravely at Tosh. “Is it—”

“No.” Tosh nodded to the lead wagon. “Those banners—pink and green. My troupe’s are yellow and blue. But this toy… my brother made it.”

Jory put a hand on Tosh’s shoulder.

“I know this troupe,” said Tosh. “They travelled the eastern circuit.” His eyes were over-bright in the thickening dusk.

Jory felt an unaccustomed urge to embrace him. He settled for squeezing Tosh’s shoulder.

Tosh put a hand over Jory’s. “We must find the travellers.” Tucking the toy into a pouch at his waist, he jogged away up the wagon line. Jory scanned the darkened treelike before following.

Near the front of the train, Duminka stood with head tilted at an empty space long enough for two wagons.

The road widened a little ahead and the only wagon ahead was half off the trail. The harness at the front of that one was empty; two of the wheels completely destroyed. That wasn’t what Duminka was looking at.

“What do you see?” she said.

Tosh and Jory looked over the scene.

“Rut-marks,” Tosh said at last. Jory had noted them as well: although the road was hard-packed, two lines had been scuffed and cut through the carpet of crawling plants and leaf litter.

“On a road that is unlikely to see wheeled traffic,” said Duminka. “Good. Your conclusion?”

“The tracks don’t line up with the lead wagon,” Jory said, “so there was another one here. Two, probably,” he added, noting the edges of a second set of tracks before they fully aligned.

“And the lead wagon was pushed off the road,” said Tosh. “Because it couldn’t be driven?”

“And carnivores don’t steal wagons. Do you think it could have been the travellers returning?”

“Unlikely,” said Jory slowly. “Why leave all the rest of their belongings?”

“Maybe they feared for their lives.”

"So they took the cargo and left their sentimentals?" murmured Jory.

Tosh shook his head sharply. “Those who travel in caravans carry everything they have with them, and only carry what they value above all else. The caravan is their life. They didn’t leave all of their belongings behind. This was someone else.”

“So two wagons have been driven away,” said Duminka, “by someone other than the travellers. What else?”

Both cadets frowned, looking around in the gathering darkness.

“Did you notice,” asked Duminka, “the sets of footprints down the left of the train?” The men turned to look as she squatted on the downhill side of the nearest cart. “Two lines. All human.”

“The prints are too close together to be running,” said Jory, crouching as well.

Duminka nodded. “Too orderly to be made by terrified people.”

“So the caravan was looted.” Tosh’s expression had grown steadily darker since they found the Players’ caravans.

“And then someone loaded everything into the first useable wagons and drove them away,” said Duminka. “Someone not afraid of carnivores.”

“They were afraid.” Jory had moved to the edge of the path to peer off the edge. Now he slid down a few feet to a rise where the ground cover was disturbed. “They posted sentries. Armed; this looks like a pole-arm depression here.” Squinting into the gloom, he pointed out another rise. “There.”

He climbed back to the trail. The trio moved to examine the road ahead of the lead wagon. They found only the wagon tracks and human footprints overlaying the tracks of retreating carnivores.

“So a group of humans,” Duminka mused aloud, “had the moxie to come into the Basin after sharp-claws attacked a caravan, loot it, and then manually haul away what they found.”

Tosh looked towards the Players’ wagons out of sight around the curve of the track. His hand rested over the pouch at his waist.

Duminka sighed and laid a hand on each of their upper arms. “Come on. We’re losing the light. There’s nothing more we can do now.”

Setting off at a jog, she led them back to the outcrop.

Yatta descended at a signal from Duminka and listened to a brief version of what they’d found. She nodded to her wingmate’s assessment. “In the morning, we’ll backtrack this road to the mountain path the outriders reported. Like as not, the travellers backtracked to there and went up the mountain to find shelter. You definitely saw tracks leading back that way?”

Jory nodded.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Tosh.

“Okay. We’re done for the night. Let’s get back to Hookwood and alert the ground force.”

…

Giljan was huddled by a brazier in the inn when the Skybax arrived back in Hookwood. A bowl of stew congealed untouched in front of him. He looked up in alarm as the riders trooped in, and shot to his feet unsteadily. From the smell of his breath, his mug was full of something stronger than fruit juice now.

“Did you find—”

“We found the caravan,” said Yatta. “No sign of either human or saurian travellers except for one Anchiceratops. Sadly he was was already deceased.”

“Reddish?” asked a voice behind them. Mosè scuffed his boots clean on a scraper by the door and tucked the rag he’d been cleaning his hands with into one pocket. “With yellow patterning like oak leaves on his frill?”

Tosh swallowed before he nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

Giljan sank back into his chair and put a hand over his face.

“He was getting on,” Mosè said sadly. He took a seat beside the one Giljan had vacated. “He didn’t deserve to go like that. The paras are doing all right,” he added to Giljan. “Peridon’s bleeding finally stopped.”

The taller outrider nodded without uncovering his face.

“We’ll return when we’ve daylight at our backs to lead a ground patrol to the caravan,” Duminka said compassionately. “So you and yours can retrieve the body.”

“Meanwhile,” Yatta went on, “we’ll go investigate that other road you passed. The survivors might have cut back and up looking for a cave. One question, though." Mosè paused in scrubbing a hand over his face and raised weary eyebrows. “What were you transporting?”

“Particularly,” said Duminka, “What was in the front three wagons?”

“Only part of your cargo was gone,” Yatta added. “But someone took two wagons from the front.”

Mosè’s face wrinkled up. “Nothing much. Just…. A bit of crockery, and tools and metal scraps. Odds and ends collected roundabouts to be traded to the smelters in Treetown.”

Yatta and Duminka exchanged bemused looks. Touching their chests, they intoned, “Breathe deep,” before withdrawing. Tosh and Jory mimicked the farewell.

Only Mosè touched his forehead. “Seek peace.”

Giljan watched the coals in the brazier spit sparks through the gaps in his fingers. Jory would have watched the older men longer but Tosh touched his elbow.

“Come on, wingmate,” he murmured. “Let’s get some real food and go to bed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't help headcannoning Giljan as Adam Driver. Star Wars creeping in despite my efforts.


	9. Animals

Before dawn, Yatta rapped on the door of Jory and Tosh’s room. With her black hair unbound and dull flight suit, she faded out of the shadows of the unlit interior: a spectre of ill tidings. Jory nodded and turned to wake Tosh.  
Tosh lay bare-chested on his stomach, breathing shallowly. A fine sweat stood on his shaved scalp and he seemed glad to be wakened. The toy dinosaur stood on their windowsill drying from a thorough wash the night before; Jory didn’t miss Tosh touch a roughened patch behind its head where the fabric had split with wear and been sewn over before they left the room.

The fliers ate quietly in the grey pre-dawn, listening to the sounds of a foot patrol readying outside the inn for the return trek to the caravan. When Jory emerged to check the Skybax were fed, the assembly looked up from securing saddles and light armour. Mose was with them; Giljan was not.  
The Chirostenotes innkeeper related to the fliers that Giljan and his Parasaurolophus had fled in the night. “Poor man,” the Chirostenotes chirruped, daintily brushing crumbs off the table onto a plate with her pinions. “Broke his nerve, that attack did. And his partner still not at full strength… Just self-preservation, that is. Instinct, like.”  
Yatta touched the radraksha mālā at her wrist and bowed her head, her lips moving silently.  
Duminka smoothed the top of her porridge with her spoon, and then said, “May their passage be smooth, and may they arrive at their destination safely.”  
Tosh’s hands stilled in pitting a peach. But when Jory looked at him, he mildly set the stone aside and sliced off a section of fruit. There was a tremor in his hand as he lifted it to his mouth.  
His silence as they washed up and gathered their kit for the day unnerved even Jory, who rarely spoke himself. He listened impassively as Yatta outlined a search pattern with the leader of the foot patrol. He didn’t even smile when Jory nudged his arm and nodded to a patrolman who was evidently persuading his youngest that the Rainy Basin was no place for a child, even a little warrior like her. The little girl looked dubiously at Tosh and Jory over her muffle of thick red scarf.  
Jory repressed his shivers at the chilly morning and raised his chin, striving to appear every inch the stoic Skybax pilot his grandmother had been.  
“Duminka and I,” Yatta said over a map spread on a barrel top, “will backtrack the woodcutter’s trail and see if we can spot any sign of them further up the hills. Jory and Toshran will fly look-out for you and your people.”  
The triceratops and his human nodded with the same ponderous stoicism.  
“If we do run into trouble,” said the human, “we will break off attempts for today and send one of your cadets to inform you.”  
Yatta nodded. “Do your people have any knowledge of what we’re likely to find up that road?”  
The patrol exchanged looks. The triceratops swayed its head in the direction of a orange-plumed Ornithomimus, and spoke.  
“Parik knows those parts,” translated the human leader. “Her English isn’t good, but she knows Therapoda.”  
The birdlike saurian bobbed her head rapidly.  
“Excellent,” said Yatta. “How long will it take you to reach the trail?”  
The Ornithomimus thought for a moment and then briskly tapped out a response in the damp soil.  
Yatta’s mouth thinned. “That’s too long to be out of the protection of a group. Travel with the patrol for now. When we stop for midday meal, we’ll return to the caravan site. You can join us then.”  
The Ornithomimus bobbed her head again, and talk turned to contingency planning.  
Duminka took Tosh aside after the assembly broke up. “We know look-out for the foot patrol is not what you want to be doing.”  
“I respect your experience,” Tosh said, too mildly. “If accompanying the patrol is where you want Jory and me, that’s where we’ll be.”  
She studied him for a long, stern moment. Then she offered a wan smile. “Like as not, they’ve all holed up at the nearest cave or hide-away.”  
“If not,” said Yatta, tying the end of her braid as she joined them by the Skybax tower, “we may have to send away to Treetown for a larger search party. There’s only so much we can do from the air.”  
Duminka regarded both Tosh and Jory appraisingly. “Do your best, cadets.”  
Tosh snapped his heels together. “Ma’am.”  
Jory followed a split second behind. He had the sense Yatta was repressing a smile. Duminka didn’t bother.  
Both women stood to attention, fists over their hearts. “Breathe deep.”  
“Fly high!”

\- - - - -

“All due respect,” David wheezed, sliding off Freefall onto the Launching Ledge, “but you are insane.”  
Lliale dropped off her Skybax more lightly than David with a Mosasaur grin. “ _Diolch_. Kados will be delighted to know you think so.”  
The wind was fierce today, threatening to pull them off the ledge. David braced himself against it as he reached for the straps of Freefall’s saddle. “How did you survive this long?”  
“It’s… instinctual. Like animals. We’re both insane. We balance.”  
David chuckled. “That's not the word _I'd_ use.”  
“Then—”  
“I see you found someone to ride with.” David and Lliale both looked toward the cliff. Kados was climbing up from the tack room.  
“I was just—” David began, thumping Freefall on the back. The Pteranodon screeched and toppled off the ledge as if pushed. He allowed himself to fall twenty feet before snapping his wings open into a glide. David shook his head.  Drama queen. “I was just telling Lliale that she’s crazy.”  
“—ily good,” added Kados. “Yes, isn’t she?” He proceeded to drape himself impractically over his wingmate’s shoulders while she inspected her saddle. “Take your time, wingmate. It’s not as though we have scrolls upon scrolls to memorise by tomorrow.”  
“The padding’s wearing off my cantle.”  
“That wouldn’t happen if you kept your weight forward.”  
“Says the rider who fell off the second-most times during probation. You just said I’m ‘crazily good’.”  
“Fine, blame the saddle. The woes of antique gear, I suppose.”  
“This was Xue Nomi’s saddle—”  
“—and zir was never unseated. Lii, do you want to blame the saddle because your riding technique is sloppy, or not?”  
Heygar cleared his throat from the steps. “Not to be rude, gentlefolk,” he said gruffly, “but could you move this discussion off the Ledge? Others require the space.”  
Sketching bows, Kados and Lliale disentangled themselves and padded off the platform. David made to as well, but paused.  
At Heygar’s heels was Arienne. Her face pinched in when their eyes met.  
In the days since the party, it had become Romana’s fashion to avoid David and seek out Arienne’s society instead. He wasn’t sure why. If Romana remembered anything from her alcoholic ramblings, it evidently sat ill with her. Maybe she regretted the almost-kiss. Or maybe it wasn’t the party: maybe it was the upcoming mid-week assessment with Devar. The fact that Jory and Tosh had already been given an assignment chafed at her, for certain. She sure as hell wasn’t freaking out about Karl and Marian being back in Canyon City on another ‘Skybax observation study’, breathing their lovesickness down David’s neck. That poor timing didn’t even seem to register for Romana.  
Either way, the hollows beneath her eyes had deepened and he hadn’t seen her sleep in three days. She had been meticulous in returning to their quarters only after David extinguished his lamp, and waking before him. Finally, although it was their custom to rise before dawn and take the canyon rim trail, twice now she had brushed him off and gone with Arienne.  
Two days, he reminded himself, was not a pattern. But she hadn’t shut him out so completely since before revealing her troubles with Volcaneum. Presently she slipped away whenever he drew near like a mountain lion fading into the cliffs.  
“I haven’t seen her,” said Arienne before he could open his mouth. “Not since this morning.”  
David grimaced. “I’m that transparent, huh?”  
Heygar, seeming to sense emotional discussion, tugged his beard and strode onto the platform.  
Arienne rubbed the curlicues of her tattoo and shrugged her saddle higher on her shoulder. She put a hand on David’s arm. “She is your wingmate. It’s only right be be concerned. But as wingmates, you must resolve your problems between yourselves.” She glanced at Heygar - who now stood with arm upraised - and smiled, but it was strained. “Talk it out. You will find your balance.”  
She was the second person today to talk about ‘balance’. Midway through taking a bet with himself over who the third person to do so would be - Oonu or Marian - David registered something else she’d said.  
He swung back. “Problems? Arienne, what problems?”  
Arienne was already leaping off the ledge, her Skybax having swooped down a little behind Heygar’s.  
David watched them gain altitude. They drifted into staggered flight, as cadets were taught, but as they did Heygar’s Skybax clipped the wingtip of Arienne’s. With a shout David could hear from the ledge, she dropped back, flattening herself to the saddle. They levelled out at a greater distance. Both riders sat up. Gesticulating one-armed, they identified the problem, circled above the platform, and then looped out down the canyon.  
Easy for some, David thought, and tried not to be bitter about it.  
“David!” called Lliale. “Mess?”  
Dragging himself away from the smooth alignment of Arienne and Heygar banking around the curve of the canyon, David shook his head. “I want to get a run in before afternoon classes.”  
She waved in acknowledgement and trotted up the internal steps to the tunnels, Kados half a step behind. Their fingers brushed as they climbed, David noticed with a touch of warmth.  
He ascended the stairs with less enthusiasm. Tosh was out of Canyon City, but Oskrim and Sorba were generally in the archives for an hour before lunch. Oskrim was always up for a run. And he prattled about plants as they went, even if his wingmate could be disconcertingly tacit; David learned more about field medicine in an hour with Oskrim than in a week at Earth Farm.  
Lliale talked about instincts. Arienne called it balance. Oskim would undoubtedly discourse on natural systems, flux, and cycles.  
Romana had become elusive as a jungle cat in her distress; she wouldn’t be tracked down by traipsing blindly through Canyon City.  
Much as he hated the idea of taking on both Devar’s check-in and Master Pohl’s written exam on limited sleep, tonight he would have to sit up and wait for Romana. Maybe it could be easily solved by talking it out.


	10. Leaves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A general assembly is summoned, and a message for David has unfortunate implications.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sneaking in a chapter in my last weeks of semester... Please love yourself and imagine Lee Lin Chin as Singh.

Sorba had already departed for the gymnasium. Oskrim grinned shamefacedly: Max, he told David as they climbed to the trailhead, talked less than Oskrim. Oskrim’s enthusiasm for wind-borne pollens and aerial mapping of flora dissemination had already expended Sorba’s store of patience for the week.  
“A-okay with me,” said David. “I’m fresh stocked. Teach me something. Sobosa Track, or Taymiyya?”  
Oskrim chuckled. “ ‘Teach me something.’ I’ll have them write that on your memorial plaque, dolphinback. Let’s take Sobosa. Max said there are some blooms like a papery Arnica down by the springs that I want to get a look at.”  
“ ‘fraid they’ll have to wait!” A sheen of sweat beading her forehead, Romana jogged up behind them. “There’s been a general summons. Two more settlements were attacked in the Basin.”  
  
Romana led them overland along the canyon edge to narrow plateau and down a short, unlit flight of steps tunnelled away from the canyon through the ridge. David blinked at the sudden sun in his eyes on the other side.  
Open to the air, the Corp’s largest briefing area was in a state of chaos: not only the First Years’ Squadron 4 but it seemed every 2nd Wing staffer garrisoned in Canyon City was milling in the amphitheatre cut into the red rock. In galleries cut just below the lip of the plateau, Skybax jostled and screeched, peering down at their partners or offloading them as David watched.  
David hesitated, unsure where to go. The trio had emerged onto a crosswalk behind the top tier of benches. The amphitheatre was a heaving swarm of people in yellow, brown, and white uniforms indistinguishable by the backs of their heads. Where was Squadron 4?  
Romana hesitated too, but the widening of her eyes and the sudden tensing of her shoulders suggested more than confusion. Was this the scene that had preceded the Corp’s mobilisation during the Sunstone Crisis?  
Pushing past them, Oskrim took off at a jog along the crosswalk. He turned down one of the stairways and melded into the hive. Everyone seemed to know where they were going except David.  
About to ask Romana where the First Years had sat before, he caught the end of her squaring her shoulders.  
“This way,” she said, taking firm hold of his hand.  
Squadron 4 sat on the far side of the amphitheatre. Oskrim slipped into an open spot on the back-most bench beside Sorba, who was frowning down at a set of gigantic blackboards painted onto a rock wall at the bottom of the amphitheatre. A staffer on a rolling ladder was sketching a mudmap of an area of the Basin on one board. A smaller-scale chart already stretched across another.  
Beside Sorba, Lliale and Kados had their heads together in unusually-subdued conference. Two rows below, Arienne, Heygar, Max, and Yun all sat in intent silence like Sorba. Squinting through the sun, David saw the red uniforms of the squadron leaders clustered beside the blackboard. Devar was nowhere to be seen.  
David and Romana slid onto an available bench just as a small woman in officer’s red strode onto the stage. They bounced back to their feet with the rest of the assembly.  
“Seek peace,” the woman intoned. Her voice carried strongly despite the space and afternoon breeze.  
“Fly high!”  
“Be seated,” she ordered as the Wing lowered their fists. The Squadron Leaders took seats in the front row.  
“Pst,” hissed Oskrim, kicking David lightly in the back. “That’s Wing Commander Singh.”  
David half-turned to Romana. “That’s Commander Singh?”  
The Commander was small and slim—five foot nothing, though it was hard to tell from this angle. She reminded David of some SBS presenter of whom he vaguely recalled his father rudely disapproving. Commander Singh didn’t look like she’d care a bit. With a shock of greying black hair clipped close to her scalp, highly arched brows, and gaunt cheekbones, her movements as she accepted a long pointer-stick from Oonu had a sharp, darting quality that brought to mind kestrels, or goshawks—something small but predatory.  
Romana’s eyes were fixed on her; she didn’t acknowledge David’s question.  
“Two more reports arrived via Waterfall City this morning—” the Commander announced.  
“Almost sixty and she still holds fastest time coast to coast,” Oskrim whispered. “Proserpine to Pooktook in under two and a half hours!”  
“Yes, and she’s still competing with Oonu to maintain it,” Max added with a chortle.  
“That’s what you get for training your challenger.”  
Sorba made the gesture for silence. “Hush!”  
Singh tapped the chalky map with the pointer, looking like she’d never grown past the Treetown ring races. “—these hamlets southeast of the Backbone range, here and here. As yet, we don’t know if it’s connected to the caravan missing en route to Hookwood. If there is a pattern, we have yet to identify it.”  
She went on to detail the Corp’s response plan, explaining that elements of the 2nd Wing would be seconded to Waterfall City’s 3rd Wing to provide bodies for an aerial search complementing ground level investigations.  
“Don’t Waterfall City have their own search squadrons?” David murmured to Romana.  
“They do, but the politicians have them tied up doing sweeps around the City and Volcaneum.”  
“Looking for stray pteranodons, I heard,” rumbled Max.  
Yun glared at him and he fell silent.  
Volcaneum. They hadn’t even changed the name for the rebuilding project. Romana’s jaw was tight. David left it at that.  
“It’s been many years,” said Commander Singh, “since bandits were organised and entrenched enough to systematically prey on the people of the Rainy Basin. Let’s not allow these carrion-eaters to gain the foothold they seek.  
“Your squadron leaders have your assignments. Fly fast. Fly well.” She thumped a fist to her chest. “Breathe deep.”  
The Wing surged to its feet. “Fly high.”  
Arm crooked as if automatically bent to clasp a helmet, she nodded to the Squadron Leaders and strode off stage.  
With Dinotopian sensibility and order, the Wing trooped out. Oonu was waiting by the door nearest the First Years. As they passed, Sorba surprised David by stopping directly in front of the Squadron Leader. She normally flew under the radar as much as possible. From the way Oskrim jerked to a halt at the tunnel entrance and looked from the space at his side to Sorba, she’d startled him too.  
“Sir,” Sorba began. She paused, a muscle jumping in her jaw, then forded on. “The attacks—are they connected to the Outsiders?”  
“Commander Singh shared all information available to the Corp at present.”  
“The Commander specified that it’s not known if they’re connected to the caravan,” Sorba pressed, undeterred. Oskrim, at her side, gaped at her subtly, one hand lifting as if to rest on her forearm. “She said nothing of the Outsiders.”  
Oonu gazed levelly at her. Much as many times before, David had the sense of a hundred calculations he could hardly fathom, let alone follow, occurring within a few moments of that studiously bland gaze. “At present,” Oonu said at length, “we have suspicions, based on the mode of attack and the things taken. But in short? We don’t know. There is neither enough evidence nor enough information. When the Corp knows more, you will know more.”  
Then, surprising David further, Oonu placed a hand on Sorba’s shoulder, nearly level with his own. “I understand you have a personal stake in this, pilot. Please, have the patience the Corp asks of all of us.”  
Sorba’s nostrils flared—then she relaxed. “Sir.”  
Oonu dropped his hand. “At present, the attacks will be treated as instigated by parties unknown. We cannot leap to conclusions absent the whole truth. I will see you all for afternoon classes as usual. Dismissed.”

As they started down the tunnel, Oskrim looked awkwardly at David and tugged an earlobe. “Sorba and I need to talk about some things. Can we run another day?”  
Sorba stood beneath the first skylight staring absently down the tunnel with pursed mouth and wrinkled brow.  
David clapped Oskim on the shoulder. “Yeah, sure, man. Take all the time you need. Romana and I are just—”  
He trailed off. Romana wasn’t behind him.  
He looked back. She was still out in the amphitheatre, talking to ASL Devar. So he’d finally appeared.  
As if sensing his eyes, she glanced in David’s direction and wrapped up the conversation. Devar nodded, put a hand on her shoulder, and then trotted off after Oonu.  
“What was that about?” David asked as she rejoined him.  
“We should prepare for the afternoon session.” Her tone was studiously bland.  
David fell into step. “Seriously, Romana, what was that about?”  
“It isn’t important.”  
“It was important enough for you to bring it up.”  
She stopped walking. The skylight overhead cast latticed shadows onto her as she tipped her head to look at him, shading her eyes. Did David see wings in the gloom?  
“Please, David. Let it be. I am… trying to find the words. I don’t have them yet.”  
David studied her closely before nodding. “Okay. Sorry I pushed. I just…” He sighed. “I want us to do better.”  
She smiled at him, and there was a flash of the mesa on the plains—fleeting but sure. “I do as well.”  
There was no time for exercising but both of them needed to bathe before classes. They returned to their quarters discussing Commander Singh and the last bandits who’d successfully set up shop in the Basin. Mostly, Romana told him, they were small bands - nibbling at settlements, picking over ruins - but on rare occasions there had been formidable organisations which required concerted  intervention from Dinotopian peacekeeping units.  
She was in the middle of telling him about the Bandit Queen Marie Badu, who had taken an entire temple as the seat of her empire, when the pair of them arrived at their quarters. They drew up short.  
“Very rude to keep an official messenger bird waiting, you know.” Preening, the creature perched on the back of David’s chair shifted its feet and cocked its head. “Message for David Scott. Are you ready to hear it now, or do you have other important things to do?”  
This was a Dimorphodon, not the more birdlike messengers of Waterfall City. David supposed it might be a range thing. The critter trilled impatiently and David realised he'd been staring. Romana suppressed a smile when he glanced at her, and smoothing her face with practiced ease, she murmured something about needing to draft a letter and sat down at her desk.  
David cleared his throat and hurried to fill a water dish Romana kept for the purpose. “Sorry! I didn’t know you were coming. I wasn’t expecting any messages. A…” He looked to Romana. She was bent over her desk, a pen to her temple. “Well, something big came up with the brass.”  
David sat on the edge of his bed while the Dimorphodon drank. At length, it clicked its jaw - the closest sound to smacking its lips that David imagined it was capable of - and drew itself up.  
“Message from Zippeau Stenosaurus,” it began pompously. “Dear David, hope you are well. Weather here is terrible. Dry-scale like you would not believe. I am making a trip to Pteros to return scrolls loaned to Volcaneum.”  
Romana laid down her pen, picked up her jacket, and unceremoniously left the room.  
“—and will be passing through Canyon City. Won’t be able to stay long, but hope to see you soon. P.S. Would appreciate if you could pass news to Marion and Karl. Breathe deep, Zippeau.” The Dimorphodon stamped its foot. “Message delivered. All expenses have been paid. Thank you. Would you like to make a reply?”  
Distracted, David rattled off a thanks to Zippo for the heads up and agreed to pass on the news, and dug for his purse.  
After putting payment in the cylinder attached to its leg and obligingly carrying it out to open air, he started after Romana. Several steps in, he stalled. They would have all afternoon in classes. He should give her space. But that meant he couldn’t put off the other thing he had to do.  
Grimacing, he reversed course and started for the guest levels.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

By lunch, the search parties in the Basin had found nothing. They gathered to eat and regroup on an outcrop that backed into a clearing where the foot patrols munched their own lunches. Disheartened silence reigned.  
Jory, gnawing without enthusiasm on a strip of dried papaya, observed Yatta and Duminka bent over their map again with their Ornithomimus guide. Neither woman had paused to eat.  
Tosh was taking a short nap against a sun-warmed rock spur, resting his eyes. “If you’re worried, do something.”  
Jory glanced at him.  
A smile stretched across Tosh’s face. “I don’t have to open my eyes to know you’re fussing. It’s what you do.”  
“It is not.”  
“It is. You just don’t like people knowing. Who made sure Oskrim only had soup that week he knocked a tooth loose falling off the simulator?”  
Jory felt his neck and ears heat up. “I didn’t think anyone noticed that.”  
“I’m your wingmate. I notice everything.”  
“You weren’t my wingmate then.”  
“Well, I watched you anyway.”  
That caught Jory off guard. He looked full at Tosh. After a moment, Tosh opened his eyes. Meeting Jory’s, he swallowed but didn’t break eye contact.  
The corner of Jory's mouth twitched down. He rolled to his feet. “They should at least eat some fruit while they plan.”  
Tosh’s soft laughter followed him across the clearing.


	11. Mermaid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo! You don't even know how long this chapter has been languishing, half written. This (the final segment anyway) was actually one of the original one-shots I outlined for the very VERY first iteration of this story, before there was plot or semblence of cringeing adult re-evaluation of the sequence. Also one of the longest chapters, I think?  
> Lo, it has be resurrected! (And made better). Please enjoy.

Karl was alone in the quarters he shared with Marion when David arrived. These were far nicer than the cadets’ rooms—a surprisingly airy set of rooms built into  a ledge near the top of the canyon, furnished in the same pale wood but with woven mats of brightly-dyed reeds on the floors and bright frescoes. Delicately-etched studies of plants hung on the walls above plush couches and shelves of porcelain jars. Papers and scrolls of data tables, his brother’s scrawl - English, lazy as ever - and sketches of what looked like Skybax nests cluttered a table set back from the window.   
A large oil painting of a saurian held pride of place above a stand on which sweet sage and sandalwood burned in a brass bowl. David didn’t know the Utahraptor, but it wore the Canyon City chain of office and an outdated headdress. This was a diplomatic suite, then. Clearly one of the Saviours of Dinotopia rated higher than a couple of dolphinbacks.   
The thought put a bad taste in his mouth (something different than brackish water and weeds). By the time Karl emerged from a back room wiping his hands on a towel, David was in a foul mood.   
“Oh, hey,” said Karl, tossing the towel and approaching with his customary winning smile. At the sight of it, David’s temper worsened. “Didn’t realise we were expecting a visit from the mighty Skybax rider.”   
He spread his arms to clap David on the shoulders.   
Whatever David had planned to say flew out of his head. “I saw you, you know.”  
Karl drew up short. “Huh?”   
“In Waterfall City. With Marion.”  
Karl’s arms dropped. “Oh,” he said flatly. “Look, Davey— I just… She only…”   
“Please. Tell me what ‘just’ happened.”  
Karl rocked back with a resentful, defiant expression that stripped away months of Dinotopia. “Well, it’s not like you were making a move.”  
David’s nostrils flared. “You wouldn’t know anything about what I was doing. As soon as we got back, all you thought about was yourself.”  
Karl barked a laugh. “Uh, yeah, hello, Kettle? This is Pot calling! Give me a break. Man, I was the one who stayed in Waterfall City to get Dad situated. I had shit to do too, you know.”  
“I had to come back for training!”  
“And you didn’t have a minute to tell Dad goodbye. You know, Dad? That guy who lived alone, in a cave, for months, thinkin’ he’d never see daylight again? Never see us. That guy? You couldn’t spare five fuckin’ minutes for him? Yeah, you’re real damn hero, bro. A fucking Saint. Man—you got issues, I get that. Whatever. But don’t take your insecurities out on him and leave me holding the damn bag. I’m done cleaning up after you.”  
“You cleaning up after me? Are you kidding?”  
“Yeah, me! You see one thing you don’t like, you go running off to your room and stick your head in your books. Just like at home.” Karl turned away with a sound of disgust. “This is still like some great big role-play game to you, isn’t it. You might think you’re some big-shot Skybax rider, but you’re the same wimpy dork who hid in his room all summer because some jerk made fun of his braces.”  
It took David a minute to find his tongue. “I almost drowned.”  
“We all almost drowned. You don’t see me screaming about it in my sleep.”  
“Were you this much of an asshole at home?”  
“Hey, I’m just telling it like it is. You don’t like it, maybe you should go hide under your covers. Or is the dark in there too much like the tunnels?” Karl pulled a sheaf of papers on the table toward him and set to shuffling them into some arcane order.   
“You know,” David said slowly, “I thought maybe you learned something down there. I thought you’d grown up. But you’re still exactly the same as before—still the same lazy, directionless jackass who does whatever he wants without stopping for a second to think what it means to anybody else.”  
Karl straightened. “You want to talk about me, Davey? Or maybe you want to talk about someone else. Because, let me tell you—” Pivoting, he approached David until their faces were a hand’s-width apart. “Marion made her own choice. And she is so… fucking… ecstatic that she did.”   
The urge to break Karl’s teeth and see his head snap back surged up in David like sandstorm.  
A flutter of yellow caught his eye. Beyond Karl, a curtain caught by the breeze trailed out the window into the sun. Gold glittered in its ripples.   
David looked back to Karl. His brother’s eyes were mostly pupil, a rim of blue around black pits like pools. A vein jumped at his temple. He leaned forward, fists clenched, and—  
David saw, suddenly, everything laid out as clearly as if he soared over it on the back of a Skybax. Karl liked Marion, yes—but he didn’t love her (maybe ‘yet’, maybe never) and he’d made some promises and said some things in order to progress the relationship that now he wanted to renege on. He was stuck.   
His old plays wouldn’t work: there was nowhere to run, no ‘vacations’ to go skipping off on with Dad, no distant university, no interstate moves. He was tied to Waterfall City by their father and to the Hatchery by his Habitat Assignment, and so he was never far from Marion. He was… trapped. He wanted to start a fight. A fight would be an excuse to fight with Marion, to prove to her that he hadn’t changed, wasn’t adapting, wasn’t going to, and that things weren’t going to work out between them.  
He wanted David to do the legwork for him. Like always.   
The knot in David’s chest loosened. His hands unclenched. Looking Karl straight in the eye, he said, “Last time we fought like this, we fell off a balcony and almost drowned.”  
Karl snorted. “Yeah, what are you going to do here? Push me off the cliff? Drown me in that big river down there?”  
Heat needled under David’s skin. In his mind’s eye, gold fluttered from beneath a helm. “Zippeau sent a bird to say he’ll be coming through on the way to Pteros. He wants to visit with us all.”  
Karl seemed to sense that something had changed. He settled back on his heels with narrowed eyes. “You’re giving up again, aren’t you, Davey.”  
“I need to change for class.” David turned to leave.  
“It is because you’ve got a new girlfriend? That blonde chick?”   
David didn’t respond.   
Just as he reached the door, Karl called out, “You know why it why it was so easy to take Marion?”   
David offered his half-brother his most condescending smile, drawn wholesale from Marion at her most smug and Oonu at his most exasperated. “When are you going to realise that you didn’t ‘take’ Marion? She chose. And pretty soon… she’s going to realise who you really are and change her mind. But that’s what you want, isn’t it? An out. You just don’t have the guts to tell her yourself, and you can’t stand to be found wanting by somebody else. Who’s the real runner, Karl?”  
Karl’s face twisted.  
David reached for the door.  
“How long do you think it’d take me to get the blonde’s panties off?”   
The door opened into David’s stony face. He stepped back to let it swing.  
“David!” cried Marion. “How lovely to—”  
“Zippeau’s coming in two days; he’d like to see you. Goodbye,” said David and pushed past Marion without accepting her embrace.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

David and Romana’s quarters were deserted. Romana hadn’t left a note but the things on top of her footlocker had been rearranged. More roughly than necessary, David threw open the lid of his locker and dug out a clean uniform.  
It had been unfair to Marion to leave like that, punishing her for Karl’s dickery. David shied away from the realisation that punishing one person for another’s behaviour was a recurring theme of his.   
The footlocker lid dropped with a thud. He’d planned a quick scrub and then a long chat with Liale and Oskrim about the Outsiders over lunch, but he was in no mood for company. Better to have a long soak and try to meditate himself into a better headspace for class. If he couldn’t control anything else, he could at least work on controlling his fear.  
…  
Since the World Beneath, he had yet to waltz into the maw-like opening of the stair that tunnelled down to the bathing caverns without at least a momentary hesitation. At least with the resupply of sunstones, the wall-sconces were filled; though the effect of the string of thumbnail lights studding one wall was, to David, unpleasantly like descending into the guts of some great bioluminescent eel. He shuddered every time.   
But the baths were down there, and the nearest surface water was a cluster of sulphur ponds several miles away. (Or The River, at the bottom of a several-thousand-foot drop.)   
He took the first steps blind, as always.  
Steam billowed up as he felt for the rope rail. He didn’t mind the water running down the walls, beading on his face and dripping into his collar. He’d long since acclimatised to the humidity exhaled up the stair as if from vast lungs. Long ago, engineers had dammed the natural chutes draining from the distant hot springs, and persuaded the flow horizontally to Canyon City. A series of terraced limestone pools supplemented by huge spring-fed boilers now made Canyon City moderately famous throughout Dinotopia. What poured into the back of the bathing caverns as superheated mineral-rich water was cooled by degrees as colder springs joined each terrace. And of course the further back you went, the hotter the water, as David had painfully discovered early on, courtesy of a certain prankster pair.  
His padded flight jacket, cosy on the cliff terraces, became oppressive as he descended into the swelter of the baths. Draping it over his arm, he stepped into the main cavern and squinted through the veils of steam, alert for hints of other bathers. The caverns were wreathed in a permanent haze, even with the scooped outflow aperture and ventilation slits drilled to open air. The lights were kept low, lesser calibre sunstones dedicated en masse to illuminate the lengthy complex: here and there, small silver-backed sconces gave off a muted brilliance that turned the steam to filigree. Condensation trickled down the ribbed walls to gutters that ran along the walls back to the outflow. A few paces to his left, water lapped somnolently at the edge of the coolest pool.   
To the right: muted chatter from the change rooms cut into the rock. David steeled himself and headed over. The silhouettes of two men swam out of the mist beside the shoe cubbies. They broke off conversing when David approached. He nodded politely as he swapped his boots for slatted wooden slippers, and then picked his way past to shed his clothes.  
Two female fliers emerged from the change rooms clutching their towels as he approached. Their thin white bathing draws clung like second skins—not a modesty many in Canyon City bothered with. Seeing him, they drew their towels closer. He thought he recognised them from a visiting delegation; one bore a more-than-passing resemblance to Yun in the shape of her eyebrows and mouth. Messengers from the Sauropolis Wing?   
They regarded him suspiciously and quick-stepped to their compatriots, whom David now realised he had definitely seen that morning, bearing Sauropolis’ blue-edged insignia on their arms as they descended from the visitors’ rookery.    
 He glanced back at a flurry of whispers between the four. All cast dark looks at the change rooms. Seeing David frown, one woman took the others by the arms and hurried them to the steps. Strange.   
David stepped inside to find no one in the communal room. The light was stronger here, a sizeable sunstone at each side of the room. Puzzled, he knocked on the door frame of the smaller women-only room.  
When there was no response, he stuck his head in. “Hello—oh! Sorry, Sorba, I didn’t—”  
She froze with her leggings halfway on, hair hanging wet and half-braided as if she’d been distracted midway. Her loincloth lay on the bench beside her and—  
Flushing, David turned away. “Sorr—” He cleared his throat. “Sorry, I thought nobody was in here.”  
“I’m not nobody.”  
“I know that.”   
Cloth rustled as she dressed, seams complaining at the speed of it.   
“Sorba… Those women—”  
“They didn’t say anything I haven’t heard before.” Her tone was brittle but brooked no response. “Sauropoloi. You’d think a cosmopolis would be more cosmopolitan, but they get into their enclaves and… Aldirma.” She jerked her head.   
David chewed his cheek. Was this what she and Oskrim had needed to speak about so urgently? He’d had some notion that Sorba had a rocky past and, after her exchange with Oonu, had surmised that it had something to do with the Outsiders—that they were the reason she’d left home for Treetown more than desire to join the Corp. But he’d never realised it might be because she was trans. Not that it was any of his business, he conceded, immediately ashamed of himself. He could almost see Rosemary in his head, chiding him for passing judgement.   
“Hey,” he said at length, “you like me right?”  
He glanced back to see Sorba giving him a sharp-eyed look, paused in tying the strings of her camisole. “Why?” Then she huffed and her shoulders loosened. “Yes, I like you, David. Why? And turn around.”  
Jolted, David obeyed with hot cheeks. “Sorry.” He shook his head. “It’s just…You know, what? It’s dumb. Just something my brother said when he wanted to piss me off.”  
“Siblings can be cruel,” said Sorba absently.  
“Yeah, he’s pretty good at getting on my nerves.”  
“Siblings do that too.”  
“You have some?”   
Sorba had never mentioned her family, although David thought now he had an inkling why.  
“Several,” she said in a studiously bland voice. “Three brothers. They never expected a sister, and they… were resistant to the idea, as it turns out.”   
“I’m sorry,” David murmured.  
Sorba’s snort was harsh. “Don’t be. They’re out of my life and they have no bearing on what I do here. Flying is all I ever wanted to do. If I can do that… I don’t care so much.”  
“The Corp is family,” David intoned, repeating one of Oonu’s early speeches.   
Sorba didn’t respond.   
“Those women,” he said hesitantly. “They were talking to some men from the delegation. They didn’t look happy. Do you… Would you like me to stay? At least until you’re finished dressing?“  
Sorba’s mouth lengthened in a grimace. “If they haven’t come back by now, they won’t. I can take it from here. Even a Liang wouldn’t dare stir trouble away from the power of the clan.”  
“So she is related to Yun.”  
“Cousin, probably. Liang Dandan. Quite a furore when she joined the Corp. The clan likes its children to further its power,” she explained at David’s quizzical noise. “Fliers’ loyalties are always to the Sky, the Corps, and Dinotopia, in that order and above all else. Dandan was permitted the insolence because she was the first; Yun had to fight harder.”  
David had never seen Yun and Sorba exchange more than five words. “He—”  
“We’ve spoken about it. A little.” The was a smile in Sorba’s voice at his startled silence when she added, “And you thought I was just the surly one who never speaks or smiles. Dandan is unpleasant but she isn’t a threat. Not right now. Romana kept me company while I bathed, and others understand the situation if need be.”  
“Romana? She’s h—?” David turned back and found Sorba staring him down. She was clothed now - pants and undershirt - hair still hanging loose over her shoulder.   
David’s face ran hot again. “Sorry.”  
Without saying anything, Sorba gathered her wet things and dropped her towel into a laundry basket. David, face still hot, didn’t move.   
She paused beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. “As you say, David: the Corp is family. As you are mine, I am yours. Thank you for the thought.”  
David nodded. Mutely he returned to the communal room to find an empty cubby.  
“Oh,” Sorba said, reappearing just as he loosened the fastenings of his pants. “Marion Seville is looking for you. Oskrim and I encountered her on the way to quarters. She asked after you.”  
David was glad there was a warm soak in his imminent future: he could feel his shoulders knotting up at the mere mention of her. “Thanks. I’ll catch up with her later.”  
Sorba tipped her head skeptically but withdrew.

Towel over his shoulder, he ventured into the gloom. A middle pool today. Most terraces were of moderate size but a single large one - almost a small lake - was tucked near the back. Beyond it, the water became almost too hot to sanely bear. David rarely ventured to it, disliking both the temperature and the fact that it dropped away sharply in the middle so one could not touch the bottom, but today it seemed necessary.  Heat and seclusion would both help him re-centre his mind.   
A knot of bathers idled in an early terrace, and a solitary man in another a little further on, but as of half way David saw and heard no one. If there was disappointment at Romana’s absence, he refused to name it.   
Ducking through a tunnel cut behind a waxy limestone column wider than two men standing fingertip to fingertip, he stopped by an empty bench. The far side of the pool could barely be made out through the steam which hung heavily as cobwebs here. The sharply mineral-scented steam made his muscles ache for a soak. Through its muffling layers he could just make out the burble of water flowing in from the preceding terrace, the splashes as the other bathers clambered out of their pool and rumble of their conversation receding.   
David hung his towel on a hook and stepped down into the pool with an effortful lack of thought. The floor was slippery beneath his toes, like the time their father paid for the boys to touch dolphins at Sea World. The heat stung his skin.   
He reminded himself to loose the breath he’d sucked in and let himself acclimatise. He crouched and then sat, hissing anew as the water rose to sensitive places. He forced himself to sit with the discomfort. (Shooed away the memory of Karl on that same childhood trip telling him an urban legend about some kid drowning in a hot tub while they themselves sat in the tub of the hotel pool. Pinched off the anger that twinged hotter than the water at the flash of Karl’s face.)   
Peace. Serenity.   
Closing his eyes, David swirled the water lethargically around his waist and focused on his surroundings.  
In the water burbling over the terraces he could hear the passage of time; in the drips plinking down from the ceiling, the sea rising, drop by drop; his own breath stirring the steam; his heartbeat in his temples as the temperature strengthened it. He could hear himself dissolving into the flow of water. ‘We are all part of something more.’  
Gradually he became accustomed to the water. The heat no longer needled him.   
Torpidly, conscious not to let it get into his eyes or mouth, he lay back and let his legs float. The water re-arranged itself around his limbs and cradled him. He was wholly in its power.  
Panic reared its head.   
Unhurriedly, he opened his eyes and reached down to graze the smooth bottom of the pool, less than a foot below him. He was fine. He was safe. This water was warm and vibrant with the energy of its journey here, red and gold like the stone of the caverns, not brackish and stagnant, not green-black and fetid with entrapment in the World Benea—  
There again: fear. He settled his knuckles against the bottom but kept his body level. Taking the thread of panic, he twined his mind’s fingers through it with meticulous care, learning its shape, its nature. Then he let it pass through him.   
When it had passed, he lifted his fingers from the floor and resumed floating. After several breaths, he had his languor back. There: a little at a time, he was conquering the fear. One thread at a time.  
There were no sunstones above the pools or on the far wall, but crystalline facets and bulges in the stone caught the light as he drifted, glittering here and there like stars. He let his eyes close again. Safe. Warm.   
Water splashed as someone stepped into the pool. “David?”  
Startled, he tried to straighten and stand too quickly.  
He’d drifted away from the edge: when he put his feet down, his heels found the edge of the shelf and slipped off it. He went under.  
Water rushed up his nose and filled his mouth, crowding out the half a shout he’d managed before submerging. He tumbled as he fell, splashing and turning. Half a somersault? A full one? He flailed, blind, deaf, eyes burning and fingers numb, buffeted by invisible currents. Which way was up? Unseen hands pulled him down and there was no surface—no surface, no light, he would die here, his family’s sightless corpses bobbing around him, drinking in the metallic green-black—  
Hands closed around his arm and pulled. David grabbed at them, scrabbling, trying to climb them to airlightfreedom—   
A foot punched his midriff. The hands broke free. David was forced down, bent double and sick. The hands reestablished themselves and with bruising grip heaved again. This time they pulled sideways.  
David popped free of the water and surfaced on the shelf, his rescuer dragging him clear of the chasm and up onto the edge of the pool.   
Coolly, he was tipped onto his stomach, dragged up onto hands and knees, and smacked on the back until he had expelled all of the water he had inhaled.  
Croaking a breath, he dropped his forehead to the stone unheeding of his spittle mixed with the water there. Romana moved aside to let him roll onto his back.   
Blearily he blinked water out of his eyes, which stung and streamed. The caves swam back into view, dim and orange and steamy. And at the centre of them: Romana, hair hanging in rat-tails and water dripping from her mouth.  
“You’re all right,” she was saying. “Let the air in.”  
David closed his eyes and wheezed. His chest ached.  
Hands clasped his face, cool after the burning of water and panic. “David?”  
He opened his eyes. Romana’s face was very close to his own. He put a hand over hers and the other at the back of her neck, drawing her forehead down to his, and squeezed his eyes shut again. “Thank you,” he rasped.  
Romana’s chuckle had an edge but she sounded so relieved. Her fingers curled into his. “You’re all right,” she repeated.  
At this range, her exhales were his inhales and water dripped from her lips to his. They stayed like that, re-establishing themselves in this world which was warm and known—Canyon City, home, not at all the dark place where the nightmares waited, waited, waited, and hands pulled them down. When she didn’t pull away, David opened his eyes. Romana’s breathing was unsteady. Her eyes were still closed and a bead of water clung to her eyelashes.  
He kissed her instinctually.  
Romana tensed, and then her fingers flared out of his. Her neck strained against his hand as she reared back. “No. David, no.”  
She rocked back, dragging her hand free of his, and rose to her feet. Her robe flashed whitely in the haze as she snatched it from the floor and hurried toward the stairs.  
David lay on the floor stunned into immobility. He had kissed her. They had kissed. And then…  
Twisting, he stared out at the pool. The waters were choppy and dark where a moment before he had been on the verge of panicking himself to a watery death. David rolled to his feet, grabbed his towel, and went after her.  
The solitary bather was clambering onto the walkway as David strode toward the change rooms. He moved to intercept David as David passed and his features resolved into Devar.   
Devar grabbed David in the same place Romana had gripped David to pull him from the water. “Cadet—” His tone was sharp but pitched low, designed not to carry through the cavern. “—leave her be.”   
David rounded full ready to strike Devar, but drew back at the picture Devar presented.   
Steam beaded daintily in his beard and the low lighting hollowed his eyes to pits, reduced his features to gestural lines deeply shadowed like a sculpture. He seemed less man than one of the ancient statues of the First Dinotopians in the World Beneath.   
“You are already,” Devar said, less sharply, “on tenuous wings with the Council after the events of a few months ago.” He glanced after Romana—vanished into the veils of steam between them and the end of the cavern. A muscle jumped in his jaw. He returned his dark gaze to David. “Oonu is not blind to your… struggles lately. Yours and hers. But the Corps comes first. Whatever those troubles are, sort them out. Quickly. Else…” He trailed off and his tone took on a hard note. “You will be re-assigned. Now, with all that is going on with the Outsiders, is not the time for disorder.” Finger by finger, he released David’s arm and gathered himself back into characteristic composure. “Understood?”  
David felt a muscle twitch in his own jaw, but nodded. “Yes, Assistant Squadron Leader.”  
Devar angled his shoulder back and inclined his head to indicate David might pass. “And David,” he added as David moved to do so, “be careful. It’s not only the Council you are on tenuous wings with.”  
David stilled. Steam billowed as Devar moved behind him to take a towel from a hook, brushing David’s cheek like the lightest of canyon breezes. David strode away without responding, not expecting to find Romana in the change rooms now that Devar had given her time to make her escape.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to balance physical-desire Davana and intellectual-desire Davana, and IDK how it's turning out. Thoughts?


End file.
